Reading Hebrew Tombstones

Jewish tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions have an added value to
genealogists, in that they not only show the date of death and sometimes
the age or date of birth, but they also include the given name of the
deceased's father.
This permits you to go back one more generation.

Here are a few helpful pointers if you cannot read Hebrew.

At the top of most Jewish tombstones is the abbreviation
פּ'נ,
which stands for po nikbar or po nitman, meaning
"here lies".

At the end of many Hebrew tombstone inscriptions you will find
the abbreviation
ת נ צ ב ה,
which is an abbreviation of a verse from the Bible, the first book of
Samuel, 25:29, "May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life".

If any Hebrew characters at all are written on a tombstone, they are
most likely to be the person's Hebrew name. A Hebrew name always
includes a patronymic, the person's father's given name.
This is a unique feature of Jewish tombstones, and a great boon to
Jewish genealogy.

The Hebrew word בן,
ben, means "son of",
as in "Yaakov ben Yitzhak", meaning "Yaakov the son of Yitzhak".
The Hebrew word בת,bat, means "daughter of".
On tombstones, these words will often appear as
ב'ר, an abbreviation for
ben reb, meaning "son (or daughter) of the worthy",
followed by the father's given name.
The word reb is a simple honorific, a title of respect —
it does not mean Rabbi.

The Jewish Calendar

Dates are written in Hebrew according to the Jewish calendar.
This calendar, which starts its "year one" with the Creation of
the World, was probably designed by the patriarch Hillel II in
the fourth century. He calculated the age of the world by
computing the literal ages of biblical characters and other events
in the Bible, and came up with a calendar that begins 3760 years
before the Christian calendar.

The letters of the Hebrew Alphabet each have a numerical value,
specified in the chart on the left. When a Hebrew date is
written, you must figure out the numerical value of each letter
and then add them up. This is the date according to the
Jewish calendar, not the
calendar we use in every day life, known as the Gregorian calendar
(also referred to as the Common Era, civil or Christian calendar).
In September 2009, for example, the Jewish year was 5769.
Given a Hebrew date, you need to do only a little bit of math to
change the Hebrew year into a secular year.

Often a Hebrew date after the year 5000 on the Jewish calendar
will leave off five thousand. For example, the Hebrew year
5680 will be written as 680 rather than 5680. To compute the
civil (Gregorian) year, simply add the number 1240 to the shortened
Hebrew year.

Here's one example: If the year is written as
תרפג,
the letter
ת is 400, the letter
ר is 200,
פ is 80, and
ג is 3.
400 + 200 + 80 + 3 = 683.
The 5000 is usually left off, so the actual year would be 5683.
By using our formula, 683 plus 1240 is 1923.
That is the civil year.

The Hebrew year begins on Rosh Hashanah, which occurs on the
Gregorian calendar in September or October.
Therefore, the dates listed for the months of Tishri, Heshvan,
Kislev and sometimes Tevet must be read as applying to the
preceding year of the civil calendar.

Converting Calendar Dates:

The complete transposition of a Hebrew date to a Gregorian date
uses a very complex formula. It is easiest to simply refer
to one of the published or online reference works, such as:
The Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar, 5703-5860, 1943-2100
by Arthur Spier (Jerusalem, New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1981);
or 150 Year Calendar by Rabbi Moses Greenfield (Brooklyn:
Hotsaat Ateret, 1987).
Most synagogues and Jewish libraries possess one of these works.
Another alternative is to use one of several computer programs:
CALCONV, JCAL, LUACH (shareware); Zmanim, HaYom, Itim
(http://www.davka.com);
or JewishGen's online JOS calculator
(http://www.jewishgen.org/jos).
These programs can convert Hebrew to Gregorian dates and vice versa,
as well as display calendars and Yahrzeit dates for any year.

Some Hebrew Phrases

In addition to names and dates, here are the common Hebrew words which
appear on tombstones:

Here lies

po nikbar

Son of

ben

Daughter of

bat

Title, i.e. "Mr."

reb, rav

Son/Daughter of the honored

ben reb

The Levite

ha-levi

The Cohen

ha-kohen

The Rabbi

ha-rav

Dear, Beloved (masc.)

ha-yakar

Dear, Beloved (fem.)

ha-y'karah

Father

av

My father

avi

Our father

avinu

Mother

eem

My mother

eemi

Our mother

emanu

My husband

baali

My wife

ishti

Brother

akh

My brother

akhi

Our brother

akhinu

Sister

akhot

Aunt

dodah

Uncle

dod

Man

ish

Woman

ishah

Woman (unmarried)

b'tulah

Woman (married) = "Mrs."

marat

Old (masc., fem.)

zakain, z'kaina

Child (masc., fem.)

yeled, yaldah

Young man/woman

bakhur, bakhurah

Died (masc., fem.)

niftar, nifterah

Born (masc., fem.)

nolad, noldah

Year, Years

shanah, shanim

Day, Days

yom, yamim

Month

khodesh

First of the month

rosh khodesh

Hebrew Abbreviations on Tombstones:

There are many many different Hebrew abbreviations that are found
in tombstone inscriptions and Hebrew literature.
Abbreviations are usually indicated by a quote mark or an apostrophe.
Often, the apostrophe is used to abbreviate a single word, whereas the
quote mark indicates an abbreviated phrase.
For more information, see the following works: